You might have heard that the Ronnie Brown-Jerome Harrison trade hit a little snag when Harrison failed his physical by virtue of a BRAIN TUMOR. Yipe! Time to hug the loved ones. Nevertheless, you know which available running back contains no brain tumors and is only a metaphorical cancer? Tiki Barber! That’s right! Here’s Mike Florio, who along with Peter King comprises the TAG TEAM TROLLERS OF THE WOOOOOORRRRRRRLLLLLLDDDDDD, advocating for Barber getting a job with the Lions. This should be good. Give us your best shot, Floors.

Why not give Tiki Barber a try?

Q.E.D., MUTHHAFFFUKKAS. Go ahead and draw up the contract, Detroit. Atta boy, Florio. I like how you kept that sentence under 80 words. Now, next time, I want you to keep your shoulders square, practice your follow-through. Oh, and don’t forget to USE YOUR FU*KING BUMPKIN BRAIN.

Tiki Barber looked at his phone again. He sometimes turns the ringer off and doesn’t feel the vibrate function when he wears loose athletic shorts, as he wore today.

But no: the ringer was on. No new calls.

Everywhere else, the September air was warm with possibility and the remnants of summer, but all Tiki felt was the chill underneath it. Something in the breeze made him wish he were wearing a sweatshirt — a hint of moisture in the air, maybe, or a lone thread of woodsmoke from a barbecue to which he wasn’t invited. He rubbed the sudden goosebumps from his arms, turned his back on the waning summer, and walked inside. There was nothing to do outside but be alone.

It was not always like this. Barber left professional sports at the top of his game, just like Michael Jordan did the first two times. Except the winning championships thing. And the team immediately won a championship without him after he questioned the quarterback’s leadership abilities. So nothing like Jordan, but whatever, the point is he has a great smile. And he’s so articulate! Surely his broadcasting career would be a massive success, a lifetime of fame he could enjoy without being hobbled by pro football’s brutality.

In the end, he was done in by his own magnetic personality. That ten-megawatt smile charmed an NBC intern named Traci Johnson, a cute young blonde who showed up to work smelling nice and wearing sexy outfits at a time when Barber’s wife of more than a decade, Ginny, was pregnant with twin girls. How could he NOT leave his wife and four children for a younger blonde woman? Barber couldn’t be bound by expectations; he can only follow his heart.

It was his heart that led him in March to file papers with the NFL to come out of retirement. The NFL strutted by like a blonde intern, and Barber knew he had something left to give — speed in his legs, strength in his 36-year-old body, the leadership inherent of a handsome person. He had heart.

And no NFL team had the brains to see that.

Former NBC head Jeff Zucker once called Tiki Barber “one of those rare personalities who appeals to virtually every audience imaginable.” Now the 35 year-old running back is attempting an NFL comeback following a four-year retirement. In the years between Barber’s promising broadcasting career fizzled out. He was never terribly interesting on camera, then he sealed his fate by stepping out on his extremely pregnant wife with a 23 year-old intern. Today show viewers hate that kind of thing.

Now he’s left attempting this ridiculous comeback in an effort to re-enter the public’s consciousness. After this falls flat he’ll be forced to develop a coke problem and shack up with Bree Olson.

I remember thinking that the best things about New York’s Super Bowl run was the fact that Tiki Barber had absolutely nothing to do with the team’s ultimate success. Knowing that his team excelled once he fled the Meadowlands for Rockefeller Plaza probably left gregarious insufferably douchey commentator with a touch of melancholy (and hopefully some infinite sadness).

So Tiki, how do you feel now that your team has achieved in your absence what they never could with you present?

“I feel great joy for them because I know in a lot of ways I helped a lot of guys on that team,” Barber said. “I know Brandon was someone who benefited from me being there; even criticizing someone is a way of getting them to think about themselves.”

But that’s not all!

Thanks to our unprecedented access to the world’s foremost taint sniffing omelet flippers we were able to learn a lot more about Tiki’s history of boosting greatness…

-I’m not saying I was at Normandy beach, but those guys know I was there in spirit.

-I had lunch with Obama once, and I think that really opened his eyes to what hope and change can achieve.

-Lisa Gherardini was Da Vinci’s subject, but I was his muse.

-I taught Alicia Keys everything she knows about proper moisturizing.

-Al Gore invented the internet, but I invented Al Gore.

-Women didn’t swoon over Matty Lauer until I took him to a proper tailor.

-You know all of those good plays Ronde made this year? Well that was me.

-I taught Gilbert Arenas the proper shaving technique.

-In the summertime, my vaguely unsettling easygoing personality repels mosquitoes.

-I’m glad Tiger listened when I told him he had a shot to win at Dubai.

-Few people know that the Treaty of Versailles had a ghostwriter.

-I approached Alexander Parkes at his graduation party and uttered one word, “plastics.”

-I told that guy that shooting up the Super Bowl would be an error in judgement.

-I showed Saddam where to hide the WMDs.

-Woody was just some Catskills hack until I handed him my philosophy textbook.

-Women wearing ties? Not before I got in Diane Keaton’s ear.

-The ratings for the Super Bowl were so good because I personally turned on every TV in America.

-One time I was hangin’ with Gandhi and I was like, “dude, you need to lose some weight.”

Thanks, Tiki!

via Awful Announcing